Bug 883330 (CVE-2012-5619)

A security flaw was found in the way the Sleuth Kit (TSK), a collection of UNIX-based command line tools allowing to investigate a computer, performed management of '.' (dotfile) file system entry. An attacker could use this flaw to evade detection by forensic analysis (hide certain files not to be scanned) by renaming the file in question it to be '.' file system entry.

The original reports speaks about this attack vector to be present when scanning FAT (File Allocation Table) file system. It is possible though, the flaw to be present on other file systems, which do not reserve usage of '.' entry for special purpose, too.

References:
[1] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/12/01/2
[2] http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=1305739444.2355.35.camel%40zwerfkat&forum_name=sleuthkit-users
[3] http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=20120503111900.GL18142%40hauptmenue&forum_name=sleuthkit-users
[4] http://labs.bitdefender.com/2012/06/flame-the-story-of-leaked-data-carried-by-human-vector/
[5] http://blog.crysys.hu/2012/06/flame-usb-dot-file-confirmed/
[6] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/12/04/2

Upstream bug report:
[7] http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3523019&group_id=55685&atid=477889

Upstream patch:
OSS-security post [1] mentions no upstream patch to correct this issue to be available yet / so far.